Treachery
by Colubrina
Summary: The war has dragged on into a stale détente until Draco Malfoy Snatches Hermione Granger from a Muggle park. His plans could upset the balance of the war, tipping things toward the light. What Hermione doesn't expect is that he'll upset her treacherous heart as well. DRAMIONE. ONE-SHOT.


Blood was hard to get out. Let it sit too long and even charms didn't work. Or maybe she hadn't learned the right ones. What she'd learned was to deal with things right away.

Hermione threw the shirt back down in the sink, turned, and faced the room. Ron was managing to look at anything but her. He hadn't cooked either, and he'd left his plate on the table, crumbs, and fork and crumpled napkin all on it. Harry was asleep on the sofa, arm flung out, mouth half open.

Hermione wiped her hands on a dishtowel with careful, slow deliberation. "I'm going out," she said.

"It's not safe," Ron said, but it was a half-hearted protest at best. The war had dragged on, and the threats of the early days, when Snatchers had lurked behind every bush and Death Eaters had stood, staring at the place they knew the townhouse should be, had given way to checklists of shops that were safe and dreary reminders on the radio that all Muggle-borns were supposed to register with the Ministry. Anyone found not in compliance would have her wand broken and be deported.

Hermione doubted there was a single Muggle-born other than her who hadn't registered. They'd all either fled or followed instructions. The posters proclaiming her Wanted had become tattered and, when they were torn down, the Ministry didn't bother replacing them. She was still wanted – technically – but not all that much.

Voldemort hadn't won, exactly, but he hadn't exactly lost either. They'd reached a stale détente and unless some of the pieces on the board shifted that was unlikely to change.

"I'll be careful," Hermione said. Then added, a bit guiltily, "Should I pick anything up while I'm out?"

"We're low on tinned soup," Ron said, just as guiltily because he'd been supposed to fetch some the week before and instead had visited a pub and gotten roundly soused.

Hermione made a vague sound a generous soul might have called a response, grabbed her wand, and left. The Death Eater watching them was asleep and didn't look to be the best of the lot. She sniffed before disapparating. Incompetence was so frustrating, even in her enemies.

That sniff turned into a shriek when she apparated into her usual spot – a secluded copse of trees in a Muggle park – and was immediately grabbed. Hands went over her mouth, her wand was wrenched from her grasp, and a hood went over her head. She kicked to no avail as her Snatcher yanked her into a tight embrace then pulled them both through the horrid squishing nothingness of apparition.

Reemergence into reality came with more hands, these lashing hers behind her back with ropes tied into knots she ascertained all too quickly were not incompetently done. They did her feet next, despite a strong kick she landed to someone's face. It was disturbing they weren't cursing her into immobility. She'd have assumed they were Muggles and she'd just been incredibly unlucky if it hadn't been for the apparition.

She wished they'd been Muggles when one of them pulled the bag off her head. Draco Malfoy and some of his little cronies.

"Malfoy," she said with as much withering scorn as she could force into her voice. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her anything but contemptuous of him. Rotten little kidnapper. "I thought you were off enjoying life as one of the elect."

He scowled at her, and many years of dislike fed the scowl she gave back. She knew she should have been afraid, but mostly, she was angry. How dare this cowardly little snake grab her and haul her off to what a quick look around confirmed was a dreary, dingy, unwashed cottage.

"Being the elect gets boring," Blaise Zabini said. "We wanted the company of the perfect Hermione Granger, she who solve all the problems."

She scowled at him too for good measure. "Fuck you."

He laughed.

"I thought Theo said she was smart," said a nervous voice. She had to twist her head around to identify that member of their clique. Gregory Goyle. War had changed him. The plump, soft bigot of her childhood had been replaced by a lean man with a jagged scar bisecting one cheek. She suspected he was just as stupid as he'd been at sixteen and had no doubt he was just as prejudiced.

"Want to duel, Goyle?" she asked. "I'd be happy to demonstrate my intelligence that way."

Zabini snorted and jerked his head toward the door. Edging around her as though she might curse him even without a wand, Goyle joined him, clearly trying to hide a slight limp, and the two of them fled far too quickly for dignity. The brief satisfaction that gave Hermione waned when Draco Malfoy pulled up a chair and met her eyes. "How're things, Granger?" he asked.

"They'd be better if you untied me."

He smiled a little wanly. "I don't think that would be the best idea."

"Hard up on cash? Last time I checked, the reward for my capture had gone up to 10,000 galleons."

"Gambling money for a weekend," he said dismissively. Hermione's mouth narrowed at that. It was enough money for most people for a year, and quite a few made do with less. She'd been making do with less. He saw that reaction, and for a moment, his eyes glinted. "Try to remember I'm rich, Granger. I don't have to do things for some Ministry payout, unlike your sad little friends."

"How's the arm?" she asked. "Death Eater Mark looking good?"

He paled at that, his already fair skin going so white she thought he might faint, and in that pallor, she could see scars – like Goyle's, but finer – going up and down both sides of his face. There were more than she could count. Dozens of needle-thin lines. "It's swell," he said, biting the words out. "Would you like one?"

"I doubt I meet the recruiting criteria," she said. The words were dry and as cruel as she could make them, but her eyes seemed stuck on the faint scars. They'd all accumulated their share of the things. Her shoulder would always be a mass of ropy tissue thanks to a curse she'd taken long before she'd had the skill to fight back. But she knew her side of the war didn't use any spells that would leave a person marked up the way Draco was. Goyle's scar she could have blamed on idiocy. He was the sort who'd end up with a spell backfiring onto him. But not Malfoy. Whatever else she might have thought about him, Hermione knew he was competent.

What in hell had happened to him?

"Would you like tea?" he asked.

The question was so incongruous, Hermione laughed. "Untie me?" she suggested. "It'll be hard to drink it this way."

He got up and put a kettle on a stove anyway. Hermione was surprised it worked, and none too sure of the safety of drinking anything heated in a kettle that filthy, but his health wasn't really her concern. She tugged at the knots holding her arms back and tried to twist herself free, but that didn't work. She'd never mastered wandless magic, and the few things she could do weren't applicable to freeing her. She did manage to float a box of tea, making Draco Malfoy jump, whirl around, and point his wand at her.

"Scared, Malfoy?"

"Not of you," he muttered and went back to measuring leaves into a pot.

"Of what then?"

"What do you think?"

"Spiders?" she suggested.

"Him." The word was whispered – half swallowed, even – and Draco no sooner said it than he flinched, and looked at the door as if he expected even a pronoun to summon the monster. Hermione had never seen such stark fear on anyone's face before. There were a thousand nightmares writ in the hunching of his shoulders and the ducking of his chin. Draco Malfoy might not be quite broken yet, but it was only a matter of time.

It was tempting to tell him he'd made that bed and ask how comfortable it was, but she couldn't. Not in the face of that fear. "Untie me," she said again, but this time her voice was softer and, his hands fumbling with his wand, Draco charmed the rope away from her hands.

"If you kill me, make it quick," he said. It wasn't quite a joke.

She snorted and bent down to undo her ankles herself. "You want to defect?" she asked. People did, though she wasn't sure how he could, not with that Mark on his arm. The grim set to his mouth before he turned his back to her and made a show of checking the progress of the water told her that was impossible.

"The others can," he said with his back to her. "None of them… he tracks us, you know. Or he can. I've been… I've not caused a fuss for so long I'm not interesting anymore."

"What does it mean when you're interesting."

Draco Malfoy, bully of her youth, braced himself against the filthy counters of this hovel. "You don't want to know," he said. "I just want you to get the others out. We couldn't… you're all so deep in hiding no one can find you, and Greg needs out." He turned, and desperation burned in his eyes. "He's not good at this, Granger. And they punish him. He tried to escape, went to an old house of his mum's, and Dolohov showed up, right on the doorstep. We miss you, that bastard said. Made Greg follow him back like… like a puppy that had… and it took two weeks in hospital for him to even walk after."

Hermione felt her throat bob as she swallowed. "Why now?"

"He tried to run, so they're going to Mark him," Malfoy said. His hands moved through the motions of pouring water into the teapot and putting the kettle back. "It's now, or it won't happen. Theo…. Theodore Nott said you had a spot you went to, and I've been watching it, hoping you'd come through before they did it." His voice was desperate. "I don't know anyone else to ask."

Hermione knew she should force a bargain. This was war, and that was what you did. Good people didn't live, and she'd lived, and all the things she'd learned in surviving told her she should make a trade. We'll take Goyle and hide him, but you have to spy for us.

She should have. It was what Ron would have told her to do. What Harry would have.

She just… couldn't.

She stood up and crossed the small room to the little kitchen counter. Her wand was shoved down into Draco Malfoy's pocket, and when she pulled it out, he didn't try to stop her. She considered cleaning the place up but, really, she was tired of that, and if he hadn't done it himself, there was probably a reason. "I'm going to have to talk to him," she said. "To all of them."

Malfoy nodded.

"Using veritaserum."

Malfoy nodded again. "Theo figured you would," he said. "I… I brought some."

Of course, he had. Hermione leaned up against the counter, closer to Malfoy than she'd ever willingly been in her life, and lifted one finger to trace along the faint lines in his skin. "His doing?" she asked.

"Shallow cuts hurt more," Malfoy said. "And if you flinch, they do another one."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "I learned not to ask questions."

And not to flinch, she bet. But her hand stayed on Malfoy's face. "Why are you doing this?" Hermione asked. "Why get them out if you know –." Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at his sleeve against her will. The Mark hid in shadow under his white shirt, but she doubted it was wholly her imagination that she felt a throbbing in the air around it. The thing emanated evil.

"I can't rescue myself," Malfoy said. He gave a hoarse laugh. "God knows you hate me, Granger, so enjoy knowing I'm paying the price for all my sins."

If someone had asked her an hour ago if she hated Draco Malfoy, Hermione would have said yes. Or, rather, she would have said she didn't really care enough to hate him, but if forced to choose yes or no, she would have gone with yes. Now, though, standing at the counter as the tea seeped, her hand on his face, she felt something far more akin to pity and, under that, admiration. "You're a good man," she said, surprising even herself. "Not many would -."

"Not that good," he said, cutting her off. He twisted his head away from her hand and took a step back. "Don't paint me as some kind of saint, Granger. They're my friends, that's all."

"What will they do to you?" she asked. "If they find out?"

"That I helped people get away?" Malfoy asked. "Why? Want me to show you?"

Hermione bit at her tongue as she tried to figure out what to do. The first part was easy. She'd drink this tea Draco Malfoy handed her, hoping the hot water managed to sterilize the mug, and question Goyle and the others, and – assuming they were telling the truth about wanting to defect – spirit then away back to Grimmauld Place. They might get tired of living there. God knows she had. But it was safe.

The second far less so. Her cooperation reasonably assured and her uncomfortable questions over, Draco Malfoy resumed the posturing she recognized. He leaned up against the counter, took a sip of his tea, looked every inch the confident aristocrat. He sneered at her. He smirked. He examined his fingernails with bored disdain. But once she'd seen those scars on his face, she couldn't unsee them. She couldn't force him back into the neat box where he'd lived in her head from the first time he'd first mocked her when they were children.

Damn him for being complicated.

"Do you want to get out?" she asked.

He met her eyes. "Yes."

"Then we'll find a way," she said. She didn't know how. She hadn't even heard of it being possible. Once Voldemort Marked you, you were in for life.

"How?" He licked his lips nervously, and her eyes followed that tongue as it darted in and out of his mouth.

"Haven't you heard?" she asked. "I'm the perfect Hermione Granger who solves all the problems."

"Probably not this one." He set his mug down and took a step toward the door, to call back the others she supposed, for their interrogation. It put him so close to her she reached a hand up to touch his cheek again. She felt water on his face. Draco Malfoy was silently crying, crying without so much as a twitch.

Without so much as a flinch.

"I'm so sorry," Hermione said. She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for. She hadn't done anything to him. Hadn't hurt him. If anything, she'd been fighting to free him from the chains he'd put on his own life. She brushed the tear away, and he smiled a bit ruefully.

"You shouldn't be," he said. "I did it all to myself."

"It will be okay," she said. They'd get his friends out, and then she'd get him out. Free him, somehow. Even that one move could upset the balance of the war.

She was standing closer to him now, so close she could feel the warmth of his skin. She bent forward to brush her lips against his cheek. It should have been an innocent gesture. A promise she really did mean to find a way to get him out, and it probably would have been if something outside the door hadn't made a sound if he hadn't turned his head sharply toward it if their lips hadn't brushed against one another's.

She froze.

He froze.

And then she was kissing him. She fumbled to put the mug down, and her hands were reaching behind him, and this was madness – madness – but she was doing it anyway. It was electric, and magic, and she'd kissed so many boys and always – always – it had been wet. That was all. She'd thought she was missing something. She'd thought she was somehow made wrong because books talked about sparks and passion and she'd never felt any of that. Only wetness and a creepy sense of intrusion. And now she never wanted to stop. Maybe the problem was she'd been kissing boys she liked, maybe the problem was she'd been kissing boys she felt obligated to like, but either way, now she was kissing a man she by all rights hated, and her treacherous heart sped up, and something in her stomach fluttered.

Draco Malfoy groaned against her. The part of her brain that still functioned noted, almost clinically, that this seemed to be as much a surprise to him as it was to her. The rest of her wanted to hear him make that sound again.

He twisted so she was pressed up against that filthy counter, and she was going to have to wash this jumper, damn him, but she didn't care. She didn't care about anything except the feel of him against her, except his mouth on hers, except his hands sliding up her back, inside that jumper, skin against her skin.

She wanted more of that. Most skin. More touch. His stomach was flat, and hard, and ridged with what she knew had to be more scar tissue. More lessons. She broke away and looked at him, breathless, horrified, torn between wanting to ask what and how and wanting to kiss him again and again and again when the door opened.

Draco turned at once, his hand on his wand, his body between her and the door.

"Fuck," Gregory Goyle said. "I thought she was the smart one."

Draco laughed, and Hermione didn't like the relief in his voice, but she did like the way he slid a hand around to the small of her back and the way his fingers curled against her skin as if he didn't want to let go. "She is," he said. "She really, really is."

. . . . . . . . . .

**A/N - Many thanks to ****mystripedskirt. She is a gift and a goddess.**


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